


Lost Lane End Into Heaven

by Ursula



Category: The X-Files
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2001-08-31
Updated: 2001-08-31
Packaged: 2018-11-20 09:13:53
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,498
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11332776
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ursula/pseuds/Ursula
Summary: Brother, oh, brother, they shot down the brink of darkness, gone on the wind like bullets.





	Lost Lane End Into Heaven

**Author's Note:**

> Note from alice ttlg, the archivist: this story was originally archived at [The Basement](http://fanlore.org/wiki/The_Basement), which moved to the AO3 to ensure the stories are always available and so that authors may have complete control of their own works. To preserve the archive, I began manually importing its works to the AO3 as an Open Doors-approved project in June 2017. I e-mailed all creators about the move and posted announcements, but may not have reached everyone. If you are (or know) this creator, please contact me using the e-mail address on [The Basement's collection profile](http://archiveofourown.org/collections/thebasement/profile).

 

Lost Lane End Into Heaven By Ursula

Paraphrasing Thomas Wolfe, "We can believe in the nothingness of life. We can believe in the nothingness of death. And of life after death. But who can believe in the nothingness of Alex?"

TITLE: Lost Lane End Into Heaven  
AUTHOR: Ursula   
FANDOM: X-Files  
PAIRING: MY Mulder/MY Skinner/MY Krycek NEVER CARTER'S  
RATING: NC-17 Just to be safe, language and the like...  
SUMMARY: Brother, oh, brother, they shot down the brink of darkness, gone on the wind like bullets.  
DISCLAIMER: I did not create the original characters. Nor do I ruthlessly take their lives and move on as if they were trash.  
ARCHIVE PERMISSION: Anywhere, as a complete story. If you have a constructive critique or wish to use a portion, contact me directly.  
SERIES OR SEQUEL: No  
OTHER WEBSITE: The Theban band gives me shelter at: http://www.squidge.org/terma/ursula/ursula.htm  
E-MAIL ADDRESS FOR FEEDBACK: or   
WARNING: Some gruesome images. Spoilers and Resurrection story.  
AUTHOR NOTES: For the Skinner/Krycek list: We are aggrieved, but will not give into the monster Carter.

* * *

Lost Lane End Into Heaven  
By Ursula

Christ, I didn't want to do this. No matter what I've seen or done in my life, this is horror. 

The garage lights were dimmed for energy conservation. My car was the only one left at this time at night except the motor pool loaners and my footsteps echoed in the emptiness as I walked toward my car.

Steadily, I walked on by the vacant eye of the security monitor, thinking grimly of the tapes from those very cameras that I had doctored earlier. Mulder had not said a word about the cover-up when I told him. Then again, I can't tell what's going on in his head. I hardly know him these days since he returned from his abduction and the grave.

Getting into my car, I turned the ignition and heard the spluttering start of the engine. My father would have been disappointed. He was the great God of maintenance and I was many miles past the sixty thousand-mile major tune-up. I've had a lot on my mind lately... too much to bother with my father's sense of what an orderly and organized life should be.

The rubber gloves and lab gear that I had borrowed were concealed in my briefcase. Everything else I would need was already at the farm.

It was miles outside of the city. Time to think. Time for my mind to race around and around about what I could have done, should have done. I always came back to one central fact. In a short time, I would be taking the body of a man that I had loved and hated out of the trunk of my car. I would carry it to an incinerator located in a locked room, in the barn of an abandoned tobacco farm, and would fire up the huge furnace to destroy the evidence, that beautiful, mutilated body. 

The edited surveillance camera tape would go with it along with the plastic bags with which I had lined the car. Mulder had offered to help, but I knew Scully needed him and I had refused. It didn't take any insight to see his relief. I'd watched that tape to edit it on the computer. I had seen what was in Alex's eyes, in his voice, and shaking hand. The bastard had never stopped loving Mulder and maybe now that weighed on Mulder's mind as my own guilt did on mine.

The first two times I had fired were the acts of a man defending a friend, a colleague, and so much more than that. The third...my soul already burned in hell over it. I went over and over it in my mind, trying to second-guess myself, but I come to the same conclusion. I had gone trip-wire. That's what we called it in Vietnam, when you couldn't stop firing until your gun was empty. It was not the assistant director of the FBI that fired that shot; it was a scared, lonely, and panicked nineteen-year old kid. 

I couldn't deal with the consequences. I couldn't drag Mulder or myself through it. I couldn't face a review board. I couldn't face them asking about my state of mind when I fired. I couldn't stand them asking about my history with Alex.

Pulling over, I grabbed the Sight Savers from my pocket, wiped my eyes with some tissues, and then cleaned the fog of grief from my glasses. Leaning forward on the steering wheel, I grimly considered my trip to the hospital. After all was said and done, he had done it to me one more time. I found the damned palm pilot in the garbage with that Coke can. I found out that an anonymous caller had called the paramedics. It didn't take genius to figure out whom that had been.

Whatever had been going on behind the azurite eyes, he had fucked me again. 

Came from so far out of the blue that I still couldn't fathom his plan. Why me, Alex? Why use me to die?

Maybe you wanted to give me your death as a gift...your swan song to your mate? 

Possibly you expected it to be Doggett who came down to see what had happened to Mulder? I wonder what he would have done? Would he have been manipulated to do what you wanted? Or would you have ended up behind bars? I know you would have rather died, my love.

I drove on down the dark miles of country highway, seeing nothing but the occasional flash of wild green eyes that make me think of yours. When I turned off onto the dirt and gravel road that was so deeply worn with ruts, my afflicted nerves jolted with every bump. I slowed, driving with extreme care as if now...as if now, I could avoid hurting you.

Getting out in front of the barn, I opened the doors, drove inside, and closed them. They were clever men, your former employer's minions. I could drive in, swing the car into place and unload within a few steps of the locked metal door. You know, when I found the records of this place and had a forensic investigation; they couldn't find a trace of human remains in that furnace although I knew that was its purpose.

The furnace burns hot, my darling, as heated as your incandescent passion. I sometimes wondered how your flesh could contain you at all...you were like some wild raptor beating wings on the cage of life. I hoped that you were free now. I hoped that I would see you again if there were an afterlife. Heaven would not be paradise without you. Hell would be Eden if only you were there. I love you.

My hands shook so badly when I put the key in the lock that it took me long minutes to get the trunk open. I crinkled my nose, ready for the expected sour stench of death. I smelled oil. For a shocking long moment, I stood there thinking that the damn car had betrayed me and burst a seal. Then I saw the slow movement of black creeping toward my hand.

Uttering a horrified cry, I stumbled back, grabbing my gun in foolish futile gesture. Darting forward, I shut the trunk and grabbed my cellphone. 

"Mulder, get the hell over here. I'm at the tobacco farm that I bought from Spender's estate. 1150 SR 106. There's something wrong with the body. There's oil coming out of him..."

Mulder's voice shook as he said, "Setting it on fire will work so will freezing it. Don't touch him or the oil. If there's a fire extinguisher, you can use the spray to slow it down. Then set fire to it."

Grabbing the fire extinguisher from the wall, I aimed the nozzle at the creeping oil. It worked, slowing the movement to a crawl. Thank God that it was not the other form, the swift moving oil worms. This thing must be desperate to come out of his body like this. Mulder said that it usually transferred by physical contact. I watched with queasy stomach and shaking legs as it crawled back into the trunk through the crack. Every hair on my neck and back stood straight up. You have no idea how badly I wanted to run out of there like a terrified animal.

Good Lord! As I stood ready with that fire extinguisher, I heard small sounds thudding from the trunk. I fought the instinct to open it, telling myself that it was not Alex, could not be him, but mingled with the fear and repulsion, I found a thread of hope. 

Calling Mulder again, I said, "Bring that vaccine Marita Covarrubias gave us."

"What? Walter, why? You can't be thinking that he's still alive? If he's moving at all, it must be the Oilien." Mulder argued.

"Just bring it. If there's a snowball's chance in hell, I want it. I want it, Mulder," I screamed. 

Goddamn it. I still loved Alex. The bastard! Through life, death, and back again for us both. I was living a fucking Faustian nightmare, but my soul sang with the chance that I could have him back. 

Even in the middle of my panic, my brain wrapped around the thought that everything he had done to me since he left my bed that last time, when he came to me after beating me in that stairwell, might not be his fault. Alex had borrowed enough money to flee Cancerman, had kissed me and said he was sorry. I didn't believe it after he left; but now, to quote Mulder I wanted to believe. 

Mulder arrived, looking like an astronaut, putting the helmet on the isolation suit as he barreled out of that car. He yelled, "Stand back. Get back, Walter."

Grabbing his arm as he jetted by, I shouted, "I want him alive. Don't fucking kill him unless you want to put a mercy bullet in my head right afterwards. I can't do this, Mulder. I wasn't over him. There's no over him."

Tearing out of my grasp, Mulder ran like a Spartan soldier at Thermopylae, dashing in front of me, shielding me. Stunned, I watched the sure grace of his movement, as he turned the keys I had left dangling in the lock, jerked Alex's body out and stabbed home a loaded needle.

The body reacted almost immediately, convulsing in huge clonic seizures. He was arching and falling, head to heels, my Atlas breaking under the weight of the world. A thin chattering wail, inhuman and awful came from his gaping mouth. Oil poured out of him...from his nose, his mouth, and his ears, sweating from his very pores. Mulder swore steadily as he watched.

I wasn't sure if it was dying so I pulled him back. We clung together for a moment before both of us jumped for the blowtorch hanging from the bench. I hated to think why Spender kept that here, but I was glad that it was there.

"Use the fire extinguisher on him! Don't let him burn!" I roared as I lit the torch.

It burned like diesel. I think it must have been dead because the thick rolling fumes seemed no more abnormal than any other type of oil set on fire. I still carefully destroyed every patch, the flames reddening my skin as jets of heat leaped back at me. 

Mulder roughly, quickly, stripped off Alex's garments, wiping as much of the oil as he could from him. Even the prosthesis was added to the blaze. Quickly, Mulder turned a hose on the still quivering body, ruthlessly driving off the remains of the oil. The white body shook and I heard a whimper from the tormented throat. It sounded like the mewling of a wounded kitten, but it was human. I was sure that it was human.

The billowing smoke was unbelievable, but the fans kicked in, drawing the fumes efficiently away. The only things that remained were the metal fragments and charred plastic of the arm. I looked around carefully, making sure that no trace remained. 

We were all coughing as the sprinklers kicked in, drowning out the fire. Wet and cold but exultant, Mulder and I carried our burden from that place up the path and into the American Gothic farmhouse, sturdy and macabre in its ordinariness.

Lying him on a table in the light of a bare bulb in a cracked fixture, I stepped back for a moment as I saw the closing wounds. In particular, the last bloody, oozing hole had healed to the point that it looked like no more than a purple bruise. The lesser wounds had stopped bleeding, but they were still in need of care. 

"Go have Ms. Covarrubias arrange for a doctor. I'll wait here with him," I said.

Alex's eyes opened at that moment. I saw him look at Mulder and back to me. He smiled a weary, but happy smile as if a child woke from a nightmare and found his beloved parent at this side. I stepped forward as Mulder leaned over him, brushed his cheek with trembling fingers and said, "I didn't know, Alex. I swear I didn't know. God forgive us all."

His kiss was a gentle balm over that healing wound. I saw Alex's lashes flutter and he murmured, "Mulder...didn't kill you. Walter...saved me."

My knees buckled then as his had shaken when the strength of his mighty heart had warred one last time with the confines of his flesh. Staggering, I made it to the table. My hand shook as tears flooded my eyes, blinding me to all but the one thing I most wanted to see, his living face, his eyes now meeting mine. The love in his expression...the joy flooding him as he realized he was set free.

As Mulder hurried for help, I held myself up on that roughly scarred wood table and pressed Alex's hand to my lips. Whatever happened from here, I vowed no one would ever hurt him again.

"I knew I couldn't have really killed you," I said, when I pressed the hand to my heart instead. "I knew."

Paraphrasing, I said, "We can believe in the nothingness of life. We can believe in the nothingness of death. And of life after death. But who can believe in the nothingness of Alex?"

I felt his fingers flutter against my chest and he smiled at me, letting me know he knew the words.

Alex whispered, "Trust in me. I found my way back...the lost lane end into heaven..."

 

Thank you, Thomas Wolfe, for your words.

And one more passage:

He will not die again.   
In flower and leaf  
In wind and music far  
He will come back again.

  
Archived: May 27, 2001 


End file.
